Millside Picnic by Bonnie White – MasterPieces – 1000 pieces
It’s been a while since I’ve assembled an Americana type puzzle, and it was nice to get back to it. Sometimes it feels boring to do the same type of puzzle over and over again, and so I step away from it. That’s what I did with the Americana/Wysocki/Heronim images – I needed a break. For some reason, though, when I looked at this puzzle I wanted to get assembling right away. Perhaps I had taken a long enough sabbatical and this puzzle was what I needed. 🙂
I absolutely enjoyed this puzzle, the quality was very good, the image was excellent for puzzling and I enjoyed every part of the assembly. I especially enjoyed assembling the houses, although I’m not sure why. I believe this was my first Bonnie White puzzle, but looking through her puzzles available at Puzzle Warehouse, I might be wanting to try some more. They’ve even got some beautiful ♦diamond♦ shaped puzzles I’d love to try.
Here’s hoping we can find more Bonnie White puzzles at the thrift stores, or that someone sends me some to review. 😉
Wavy Rainbow – All Jigsaw Puzzles (Impuzzible) – 1000 pieces
Isn’t this a gorgeous image? I fell in love with it and had to get it, even though at the time I was trying not to buy more puzzles. I fell off the wagon, so to speak.
I’ve done 3 other puzzles from this company, All Jigsaw Puzzles, and I’ve never had any problem with their quality. This one though, slight problem – the color was coming off in a few spots. You can’t really tell in the picture above, but there were small bits on the edges of a few pieces where the color was coming off. I then glued the puzzle because I think it would be a beautiful wall-hanging. But spreading the glue around on the top of the puzzle with an old plastic credit card pulled more color off. I could see flecks of color in the glue before it dried, and once it was completely dry there were places where the color came completely off. This has always been my method when gluing puzzles and I have never come across this problem before.
It only affected this small portion of the puzzle, which I found odd, but perhaps it has something to do with the ink used? Whatever the reason, it isn’t something you’d want to have happen to your puzzle. I emailed the company and got an immediate response; they took care of me with excellent customer service. As I said previously, I’ve worked 3 of their other puzzles and have not had any quality issues before. The quality has been very good and I believe this was just an anomaly, they assured me they would be communicating with their manufacturer to fix the problem. I bought another of their Impuzzible images at the same time as this puzzle, and will be posting about it here. Hopefully there won’t be any more color lifting.
Quality issue aside, I enjoyed this puzzle very much. Even though it may look difficult, I didn’t find it too much of a challenge. For me the red to orange section was the most difficult, my eyes had a hard time distinguishing the difference in the colors. The rest of it was actually quite easy and fun. It really is stunning in person, and I very much enjoyed assembling mine.
This image has also been made into a puzzle by Buffalo under the name Vivid Color Challenge, in case you don’t want to take a chance on a quality problem but would still like to give the puzzle a try. It’s gorgeous!
The Christmas Library by Aimee Stewart – Ravensburger – 1000 pieces
Aimee Stewart and Ravensburger, always a fantastic combination! Her artwork is beautiful and colorful and ever entertaining, and her puzzles have never disappointed. 🙂
The Christmas Library made for excellent puzzling – I enjoyed every single piece. Having words to assemble always makes me happy, and the style of the vintage books, ornaments, and images was absolutely gorgeous! The quality was excellent, as usual. It’s very rare that I have any quality issues with Ravensburger. The pieces look and feel like a premium puzzle, and fit together like one too. An all around fantastic Christmas image!
I’ve never really been a Christmas puzzle person, most holiday puzzles are so similar that they don’t interest me much. This year though, I’ve been lucky enough to find a few puzzles that are outside the norm, and they’ve been quite fun to assemble. I’m putting this one in that group, it’s more of a collage and that’s more to my liking then the standard Santa and the tree puzzles.
Stay tuned, the next 3 days will be all Christmas puzzles that I’ve assembled this season; I enjoyed every one. (I can hardly believe I just wrote that! 😮 )
Moulin Rouge by Marilyn Dunlap – Remarks – 1000 pieces
This was an interesting thrift store purchase that mom and I assembled together. It looked more fun than it was; for me, anyway. I chose this one to assemble, but it didn’t meet my expectations for some reason. I’m not sure I can articulate why this was, I just know that it was.
The random cut was very interesting and kept us on our toes, and the pieces fit together well. The piece shape is very obvious in the finished puzzle, which isn’t ideal but doesn’t really affect the actual assembly. It does make it more difficult to make out some of the words though.
I’m not usually so “blah” about a puzzle, it’s mostly yay or nay; either really loved it or didn’t like it. I have no idea what I was expecting, but whatever it was didn’t materialize. For the most part this one just makes me shrug my shoulders. Eh. The quality was good, it just lacked something for me. If I’m going on quality I would recommend this puzzle, if the image is something you like go for it. 🙂
Excellent thrift store find, it was so much fun! This one was unusual in that mom completed it first, and then I did; typically it’s the other way around. We both enjoyed it very much, it was absolutely worth the 99 cents we bought it for. 😎
The fit was tight, but not in the extreme which was good. Sometimes the Springbok puzzles are so tight the edges curl up! I’m not a fan of the super tight fit and was glad that wasn’t the case here. The image is perfect for puzzling, especially for someone who enjoys collages. I love being able to grab a bunch of pieces for a small section and put them together without having to look at the box image. I think that’s why I’m not a fan of the super busy images; I dislike having to stare at the box trying to figure out what I’m actually assembling or where it goes.
I had a very good time with this puzzle, it was hard to walk away from working on it and was completely entertaining. Excellent quality puzzle with an awesome image; if you come across one new or used I would definitely recommend it – 2 chocolate bars way up! 🍫🍫
My Jigsaw Journal 